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Show I EUREKA, NEV. j Mrs. Jennie Smith and Miss Josephine Mulcoy, accompanied by their mother. Mrs. Mulcoy, left last week for a visit at San Francisco. France Facing a Great Crisis. The depopulation of France has occupied occu-pied the attention of economists, excited ex-cited the fears of the nationalists and prompted the thunders of the pulpit, says the New York Sun. Its ethical, ethnical, patriotic sides, or rather the obverse of these, have been discussed in print until the subject seems threadbare; thread-bare; but that it is a very vital subject indeed, an issue of the gravest moral and political importance, we learn from reading a powerful article in a recent issue of La Revue Hebdomaelaire, written writ-ten by Monslgnor Bibier, Bishop of Ver-sailes, Ver-sailes, entitled "The Depopulation of France." The worthy prelate tells hi!- leaaers mat they fear cholera, consumption, con-sumption, pestilence, and seek every precaution to avoid contagion; but the family, which is the granitic base of the world, it attacked by a moral plague which is slowly undermining it in some countries and rapidly in France. Keeping Keep-ing his heaviest artilery for the close of his eloquent essay, Monsignor Gibler makes an appeal notable for common sense. He pictures the domestic hearth with one or two children, and he tells of the anxieties of the elders about their offspring. off-spring. The bourgeois produce which says. "We may have one, two, no more," is often answered by the voice of God, "Zero! You shall have none at all." Consider Con-sider the education of the adored son, the only child. Spoiled from his cradle, seldom forbidden anything, he arrives at the age of manhood a perfect mark for the harpies. He drinks, he gambles, he leads a life of luxury; and he soon vanishes, for nature is unsparing with 1 the unfit. A family vanishes, too, and i because of parental selfishness. The contrary of all this is the house filled with children, happy, or at least contented, never in danger of corruption corrup-tion because of too much money, self-reliant self-reliant by necessity they never can count on a ready made future; the girls devoted to domestic details, pious, Godfearing, God-fearing, and later good wives, good mothers. The parents of seven or eiht children must practice moderation; simplicity, sim-plicity, in living is their, watchword. Even if there is no luxury there arc sound morals, good health, cheerful dis-. positions. Like all relegious apologists the Bishop of Versailles excels in drawing draw-ing a lively picture of virtue and a dark potrait of vice: yet there is no denying de-nying that wealth is for the young too often a source of danger. He does not hesitate to go into details de-tails concerning the voluntary sterility of French families, and at this juncture the ecclesiatical fires begin to blaze up. It is because of the accursed love of money, money, which purchases the superfluities su-perfluities of life, that the French family fam-ily is dwindling. Selfish comfort is set above Christian ideals. Statistics can be no longer blinked. Then follow the inevitable remedies. The people rauii; believe in God; must fear the justice of the Almighty; must have confidence in the goodness and mercy of Providence. Monsignor Gibier does not preach a sermon: ser-mon: bus conclusions are logical, according ac-cording to his point of view; religion is the. one rock of safety for France. |